The process of information transfer for communication and storage devices typically entails transmission and reception of data over a particular media. The transmission media can be, for example, copper wires, fiber optics, air, or magnetic recording/detection in the case of storage media like a read channel. Given the ever increasing need for more information transfer (or more information storage), the process of information transfer is subject to data corruption. Error control codes, however, permit communication and storage information to be transferred with an arbitrarily low probability of error. For example, iterative error control decoding algorithms provide error protection that nears the Shannon limit. The Shannon limit has long been known as a bound on the performance of error control systems, as described in “Elements of Information Theory”, by Thomas M. Cover and Joy A. Thomas, published by John Wiley, 1991, and “A Mathematical Theory of Communication” by Claude E. Shannon, The Bell System Technical Journal, July 1948, both of which are incorporated by reference herein. The benefit of an error control system is that error control systems permit error-free transmission with reduced signal energies, or extended range, or increased density in storage media.
Bit error rate (BER) testing has long been the method of choice used to test the robustness and quality of data transmission over media. Commercial bit error rate testers are available from suppliers such as, for example, Agilent or Tektronix. Commercial bit error rate testing entails sending a sequence of information bits from a transmitter to a receiver, and performing data integrity check on the bits received by the receiver. Many transmission protocols (e.g., Ethernet and SONET) require a very high quality of transmission, or in effect, a very low bit error rate. For example, the latest IEEE 802.an 10 GBase-T standard requires a bit error rate of 1E-12. To perform manufacturing test of an end product (e.g., an integrated circuit (IC), a link, or a server blade), and guarantee such a low bit error rate level for the end product is fairly challenging. Given that errors typically occur on a random basis, error-free transmission of 1E12 bits (e.g., in a 10 GBase-T implementation) from a transmitter to a receiver does not necessarily guarantee a 1E-12 bit error rate. During testing of data transmission, the random nature of error events has to be taken into account and, therefore, multiple cycles of 1E12 bit streams need to be sent between the transmitter and the receiver to ascertain the bit error rate performance of the end product. Moreover, if error control codes are used to improve link quality, the robustness of the error control codes can only be exercised through exhaustive testing which may translate to minutes or hours required to test an end product. Such a long time required for testing an end product corresponds to substantial additional cost to the end product. For example, in some cases, the cost may be realized in a limited large volume production of an end product due to there being a limited number of bit error rate testers to test a sufficient number of the end products.